JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

T&T Tik Tokers denounce racism

by

Gillian Caliste
1784 days ago
20200822
Shanice Webb

Shanice Webb

COVID-19 has tried it, but the young peo­ple of T&T are not con­tent­ed to sit by and let hate-mon­gers de­ter­mine this coun­try’s new nor­mal. Fol­low­ing a slew of racial­ly-charged com­ments and bit­ter ex­changes be­tween In­do-Trinida­di­ans and Afro-Trinida­di­ans on so­cial me­dia in the wake of the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed Gen­er­al Elec­tions, T&T’s youth have pushed back in the hopes of launch­ing a re­gion­al move­ment against racism; ul­ti­mate­ly re­in­forc­ing re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al trends.

Prompt­ed by a one-minute video by 17-year old Sachin Balkissoon on the so­cial me­dia plat­form Tik Tok, many young peo­ple have been shar­ing the elec­tron­ic mes­sage and post­ing videos of their own de­nounc­ing racial di­vi­sion in T&T.

On Au­gust 12, Balkissoon took the ini­tial stance re­ject­ing racism and called on oth­ers to speak up un­der the hash­tag: my­coun­tryy­our­coun­try. Some of his fel­low con­tent cre­ators and oth­er youths, in gen­er­al, re­spond­ed by col­lab­o­rat­ing with him in an­oth­er video bear­ing the hash­tags: my­coun­tryy­our­coun­try en­dracism trinidadand­to­ba­go.

They made de­c­la­ra­tions like: “It is time for us to do bet­ter!” and “We are our own gen­er­a­tion… stamp­ing out racism is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” as strains of “God Bless Our Na­tion” emerged in the back­ground.

The my­coun­tryy­our­coun­try hash­tag has gar­nered around 700 shares and over 150,000 col­lec­tive views on Face­book, In­sta­gram and oth­er so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

In a sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with Balkissoon, bear­ing the hash­tag: everycreedan­drace and post­ed on Au­gust 17, young peo­ple across the coun­try from Port-of-Spain through Tu­na­puna, To­co, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go again de­nounced racism and pro­mot­ed T&T as a hap­py, all-em­brac­ing so­ci­ety, amidst back­drops of this coun­try’s pic­turesque beach­es and flo­ra and fau­na. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there were oth­ers who post­ed videos of their own.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd on Tues­day via phone, Balkissoon said he was so shocked last week by the racial on­slaught against each oth­er by this coun­try’s two ma­jor eth­nic groups, he had a phys­i­cal re­ac­tion.

“Af­ter the elec­tions, my feed on so­cial me­dia and oth­er friends’ ac­counts ex­plod­ed with racist com­ments; East In­di­ans (In­do-Trinida­di­ans) against Africans (Afro-Trinida­di­ans), Africans (Afro-Trinida­di­ans) against (In­do-Trinida­di­ans) In­di­ans. It was dis­gust­ing. Peo­ple said it made them cry. Per­son­al­ly, I vom­it­ed. It was some re­al­ly heinous stuff.

“It made you sick, it put your mood off…and my friends col­lec­tive­ly had an op­po­si­tion to it. It was hor­ri­ble,” he re­called.

Stress­ing that he had no claim on the an­ti-racism move­ment led by the youth, Balkissoon ex­plained that he was just ar­tic­u­lat­ing what his peers were feel­ing and had to speak out, es­pe­cial­ly to try to bring heal­ing to his friends around him who were hurt­ing.

The youth who has ramped up over 17.9 k fol­low­ers since he start­ed cre­at­ing short videos last Au­gust as a means of com­ic re­lief for young peo­ple, said he had hoped his ini­tial video would help shift an “out­dat­ed” mind­set which he felt had plagued gen­er­a­tions for “too long” in this coun­try.

Apart from be­ing ap­palling, Balkissoon felt the height­ened an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween the races was “wor­ri­some” be­cause left unchecked, it could be nor­malised in this coun­try.“The way the coun­try was mov­ing if peo­ple be­came more racist, we wouldn’t be able to hang out in the same way any­more. There would be this big di­vide be­tween us,” he ex­pressed.

The The­atre Arts stu­dent of Princes Town West Sec­ondary, who for­mer­ly at­tend­ed Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary in Moru­ga, said he cher­ished his days of grow­ing up in his “sanc­tu­ary” of Princes Town among and at­tend­ing school with oth­er eth­nic groups.

“I didn’t see those com­ments (last week) com­ing from my age group,” he said.

He be­lieves that be­cause so­cial me­dia pro­vides a high de­gree of anonymi­ty, peo­ple feel free to bul­ly each oth­er and spew hate.

Hav­ing re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back from young peo­ple in places like Guyana, Ja­maica and New Del­hi, Ba­likissoon said he and oth­er con­tent cre­ators want to in­ten­si­fy their ef­forts to stamp out racism.

He said the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence has made him think deep­er about his pre­vi­ous­ly lighter Tik Tok con­tent and be­come more sen­si­tive to oth­er peo­ple’s feel­ings in gen­er­al.

Balkissoon has the sup­port of his par­ents, Sher­ry and Ro­hit, with the lat­ter shar­ing that his son had al­ways been a “peo­ple per­son” who em­braced every­one.

One of the young peo­ple who col­lab­o­rat­ed with Balkissoon is 19-year-old Kyle Ben­nett from D'Abadie.

“This was my first time ac­tive­ly vot­ing, so I was pay­ing close at­ten­tion to pol­i­tics on so­cial me­dia. I al­ways had an idea of what was go­ing on in terms of racism and seg­re­ga­tion in our coun­try, but this was a whole oth­er lev­el of racism, seg­re­ga­tion and prej­u­dice,” said via What­sApp.

The In­sta­gram and YouTube con­tent cre­ator who plans to study ro­bot­ics en­gi­neer­ing said peo­ple of his gen­er­a­tion who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ha­tred ad­mit­ted they were just mim­ic­k­ing their par­ents and grand­par­ents.

“I be­lieve that our gen­er­a­tion is tru­ly the fu­ture of our coun­try and that means that this gen­er­a­tional racism, seg­re­ga­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion does not have to con­tin­ue with us, we can put a stop to it,” Ben­net in­sist­ed.

T&T YOUTH PUSH BACK, SET THE PACE

Q&A with Shan­ice Webb, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil (TYC).

In light of an ap­par­ent resur­gence of youth in­volve­ment in lo­cal is­sues, Guardian Me­dia Ltd chat­ted with Shan­ice Webb, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil for her take on such de­vel­op­ments.

1. Please out­line the aim of the TYC.

The Trinidad Youth Coun­cil is an all-in­clu­sive, non-par­ti­san, non-gov­ern­men­tal, non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, youth-led, youth-ori­ent­ed, youth-struc­tured na­tion­al youth move­ment which aims to syn­chro­nise youth de­vel­op­ment at the grass­roots and wider com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

2. Tell me a lit­tle about your role as pres­i­dent.

I have been pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil for the past three years. I have rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I’m a part of the UNFP Youth Ad­vi­so­ry Board. We’ve done projects and ini­tia­tives geared to­wards youth de­vel­op­ment and en­gage­ment; our most re­cent ini­tia­tive hav­ing been a youth Covid-19 re­sponse. We al­so worked on a vir­tu­al youth sum­mit ear­li­er this year.

3. Young peo­ple have been send­ing a re­sound­ing mes­sage on so­cial me­dia in re­sponse to the bar­rage of racist com­ments which fol­lowed the re­cent Gen­er­al Elec­tions. How do you feel about this de­vel­op­ment?

It is ex­cel­lent that young peo­ple are re­al­ly and tru­ly push­ing back against the nar­ra­tive of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It clear­ly shows that young peo­ple are tak­ing charge and say­ing that we are go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence with our gen­er­a­tion and I think that is key; be­ing able to set the pace; the ex­am­ple to every­one else and show that we are will­ing to make a dif­fer­ent choice.

4. With­in re­cent times this coun­try has seen an in­creased in­ter­est in the youth par­lia­ment, po­lit­i­cal ex­perts stress­ing the im­por­tance of the youth vote in na­tion­al elec­tions…even youths in East Port-of-Spain tak­ing to the streets in the wake of the deaths of their peers at the hands of po­lice. Would you say the youth have in­ten­si­fied their thrust to­wards shap­ing T&T so­ci­ety with­in re­cent times? Do you see this cur­rent so­cial me­dia push back on racism as an ex­ten­sion of this?

I think that young peo­ple have al­ways been ac­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety, speak­ing out against in­jus­tice go­ing back to the Black Pow­er Move­ment in the '70s. Young peo­ple have al­ways been ac­tive par­tic­i­pants, so this con­tin­ues along with that trend. Re­cent­ly young peo­ple con­tin­ue to make their voic­es heard and with so­cial me­dia every­one has ac­cess to their own plat­forms re­al­ly am­pli­fy­ing the is­sues that they want to see, and I think that main­stream me­dia has played a role, as well, har­mon­is­ing young peo­ple’s voic­es and giv­ing them a space.

5. What do you think makes this gen­er­a­tion– Gen­er­a­tion Z–as some say, ca­pa­ble of ef­fect­ing mean­ing­ful change in mind­sets, leg­is­la­tion and ul­ti­mate­ly in Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety?

The rea­son why this gen­er­a­tion is able to cham­pi­on change and be able to see change hap­pen, not just in mind­sets is be­cause this gen­er­a­tion is look­ing at them­selves and not nec­es­sar­i­ly blam­ing oth­er gen­er­a­tions for what has hap­pened or er­rors of the past, but say­ing: Hey, this be­gins with us. We want to see a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go, a Trinidad and To­ba­go that is in­clu­sive, that em­pow­ers every­one. By do­ing that lev­el of in­tro­spec­tion and say­ing this is what we want and by ac­tive­ly work­ing to­wards it is what makes the dif­fer­ence.

Race relations


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored